This blog started in 2009, in order to clarify the truth of the situation about the persecution of Falun Gong (Falun Dafa) in China and clear up the lies propagated by the Chinese Communist Party and its associated medias.

This blog will continue to exist as a portal to different websites that can update us about the situation in China, but there will be no further blog posts, and you will no longer receive updates to blog posts from BehindLies09.

If you wish to receive up-to-date information on the situation in China, highly recommended websites include: (These are where my sources came from)

Yue Embroidery

All the sketches shown in the photos are Yue embroidery designs.

Are these embroidery designs not pleasant to the eyes? Certainly, silk bed covers embroidered with these designs, using colorful silk threads, are appealing. At a bargain price, who wouldn’t buy them? After all, it is quite unlikely that anyone would even dream that behind these colorful products with their intricate designs are heartbreaking stories.

Seventy individual patterns are combined and embroidered on bedcovers by Falun Gong practitioners and other inmates. Yet, they are not paid.

For certain, these embroidered products are elegant and to be admired. However, before becoming delighted by the bargain price one should ask, “Under what circumstances were these products produced?”

Embroidered products are desirable if produced by a willing workforce, but for prisoners who are persecuted for their faith, producing these products is an agonizing process full of suffering. These prisoners are forced to produce large quantities and given a untenable quota. Besides there are deadlines that are very difficult to be met.

The workers are given the bare minimum of raw materials. Any faulty embroidery is cut off and redone. Anyone who doesn’t meet the deadline and quota is subjected to physical punishment and torture. Many relatively rich inmates are paying skilled inmates to do the work and in some cases they bribe prison guards to get a free pass.

When working on embroideries, inmates have to remain in a fixed position for a long period of time with no break. This is devastating to their health. In addition, they are allowed only a short time for eating and restroom visits. Besides, any time away from work has to be approved by a prison guards.

Producing these embroidered products is heartbreaking work. Sitting there and embroidering all day long is already difficult, but the worst is the fear that they may be punished if they don’t meet quotas and deadlines.

It is hard to imagine that these people have to work despite suffering back pain. Also, many develop poor eyesight due to the dim light in the workshop, which doesn’t get better when transferred to other jobs.

After more than 14 years of persecution, the cruelty inflicted on innocent Falun Dafa practitioners continue in China. This one case is just the tip of the iceberg. Friends, do not be numb to the circumstances and calmly take a look.

(Minghui.org) The last scream from Ms. Xu Zhen was heard at 9:00 am on October 20, 2011. It was the day that she was smothered to death at the Division 4 building of the Chongqing Women’s Forced Labor Camp. The discipline officer on duty that day was Mi Mei.

Ms. Xu’s body was carried on a stretcher secretly through the hall and the captain’s office on the second floor to avoid being seen around 2:00 pm. She was already dead at the age of 46.

Ms. Xu was about 5’7” tall and lived in Hechuan District. After cultivating Falun Dafa, she became more energetic and felt like a new person. She followed the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and became a much better person. She was always nice to people, and worked hard at her company. However, being a…

For practicing Falun Gong, the communist regime sentenced me to Sichuan Province Women’s Prison in Yangmahe Town, Jianyang City. The following images are copies of designs we used to make Shu embroidery in prison. I secretly traced the patterns on carbon paper while making the products.

Shu Embroidery

There are two kinds of Shu embroidery: single-sided and double-sided. Shu embroidery requires splitting a thread into multiple strands. These embroidery patterns are designed for handkerchiefs to be sold in the Sanxingdui tourist areas. There are many patterns like this. There are also larger pieces of embroidery. For example, I used to embroider on Korean dresses that were exported to South Korea. The collars and wristbands were covered with embroidery.

But how many people know that these delicate dresses came from Chinese prisons?

Many Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners were forced to create these delicate Shu embroidery pieces. They had to work for more than ten hours per day. If they could not finish their quota, they would get two kinds of torture in monthly sessions.

Torture Used on Those Who Failed to Meet Quotas

1. “Planting Seedlings” Torture: The victims are forced to stand with legs straight and their finger tips touching toes for as long as several hours. Many victims passed out, but they were forced to continue this position after being revived.

2. “Tying with Rope” Torture. First, the rope was wet. Several guards and prisoners pin the victim to the ground, then tie the victim’s hands together behind his/her back. Then chopsticks are used to tighten the rope.

Torture Re-enactment: Tying with Rope

The pain of this torture is indescribable. I suffered this kind of torture on my first day in prison because I refused to give them my copies of articles by Master Li Hongzhi. My hands and fingertips still felt numb after a couple of months, making me incapable of handling lots of little things in daily life. The day after the torture, the guards forced me to do slave labor, claiming that I should earn my meals.

Many practitioners in this prison suffered this kind of torture, which caused some women to suffer gynecological problems. Many practitioners were forced to do embroidery for long hours, plus frequent torture, making their vision quickly drop so they were not able to embroider any more. Then they were forced to do other work. The prison forced detainees to do intensive work to exhaust their vision and physical strength until they could make no more profit.

These two kinds of torture were generally applied to all prisoners. There were more torture approaches particular to Falun Gong practitioners: solitary confinement; not being allowed to wash or change underwear; cursing and beating, etc.

September 13, 2013 | By a Falun Gong practitioner in Sichuan Province, China

(Minghui.org) Colorful butterflies; cute beetles; adorable puppies and kittens; eye-pleasing apples, bananas, and grapes; and cartoon images decorate beaded handbags and backpacks for teenage girls and ladies. But how many people know the sad story behind these beautiful products?

For practicing Falun Gong, the communist regime sentenced me to Sichuan Province Women’s Prison in Yangmahe Town, Jianyang City. The above images are copies of designs we used to make beaded bags in prison. I secretly traced the patterns on carbon paper while making the products. According to a technician sent by a manufacturer to assist production and quality inspection, these bags were for export only.

No one knows for sure what percentage of the made-in-China merchandise is produced by slave laborers in prisons. While incarcerated, I worked on a number of jobs: inserting real hair into a rubber scalp; making shoe heels; making paper boxes for moon cakes, and making envelopes. We were forced to work extended hours for days without a break. One inmate was so tired that she pierced her finger with the sewing machine needle. These jobs usually had a deadline, so we were forced to work day and night. Those who were old or weak were ordered to do simple jobs such as knitting, making embroidered insoles, and making fireworks.

After my earlier arrest at the end of 1999 in Chengdu City, I was sent to Ningxia Street Detention Center. I shared a cell with about 40 people and it was so packed that we could only sleep on our sides like sardines. People had to sleep next to the toilet and under the bed. The place was filthy and humid. Even in such a dirty place, we were forced to make dry tofu bundles with toothpicks and sausages for hot pot. We made candies, assembled medical syringes, and made plastic bags for chemical fertilizer.

We worked long hours. The plastic bags were very dirty and smelled awful. The workplace was dusty and the chemical dust made it hard to breathe and caused rashes on the skin.

Recently, China has announced its intention of phasing out the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners by 2015 and the introduction of the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS), a computerized organ-allocation system.

Unfortunately, COTRS lacks transparency: the matching process and information about the organ donors are not open to the public or to an independent third party. With regard to the announced 2015 time frame, Chinese officials speak vaguely of ending the reliance on executed prisoners, not of the complete cessation.

Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH) holds that the announcement and the introduced systems are misleading and insufficient.

DAFOH states:

1. The international community considers the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners and from prisoners of conscience unethical. If killing for organs—under the guise of executing prisoners—is unethical, it remains so every day it continues. Seeking an end of this unethical practice conforms to ethical standards defined by medical organizations, such as WMA, TTS, WHO, and others.

Once it is recognized as unethical and as a crime against humanity, the harvesting of organs from prisoners needs to end immediately. It is ethically indefensible to gradually end a crime against humanity. The Chinese government announcement of “phasing out” this crime against humanity is a deceptive statement in itself. When people’s lives are at stake, then “This is no time … to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

2. In 1984, the Chinese regime issued a law to legalize organ extraction from executed prisoners. Chinese officials still called it a lie when Dr. Wang Guoqi testified about this practice before Congress in 2001. China denied the practice until 2005, when international pressure forced Chinese officials to admit the practice. Then they stated that up to 90 percent of organs originated from this source, which contributed to more than 10,000 transplants per year. Since the Chinese regime has a history of lacking in candor, it is mandatory to implement steps for scrutiny and monitoring.

In 2007, one year before the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the Chinese Medical Association (CMA) pledged to the World Medical Association (WMA) to end the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, except for relatives. Despite the pledge, China continued to perform more than 10,000 transplantations every year without an effective public organ-donation system.

Now, six years after CMA’s pledge, China does not even speak of ENDING the practice as it did in 2007, but only announces—with an indefinite time frame—to PHASE OUT the practice. We hold that the recent 2013 announcement from China is actually a step back from the pledge in 2007. Based on the above, it is incomprehensible why the international community applauds the recent announcements.

3. The official Chinese terminology is vague and ambiguous as it only announces the beginning of the phaseout without establishing a deadline when the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners will eventually come to a complete end. According to statements from Chinese officials, the time frame could be 2015, but also “indefinite.” When asked when the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners will end, Chinese officials describe the time frame as “indefinite.” In other announcements, Chinese officials speak of “phasing out the dependency on organs from executed prisoners,” which does not address the end of this unethical practice but only a shift in the percentage, keeping the option open to continue the practice if needed.

The official statements from China are insufficient and vague. Without international scrutiny and monitoring, the phaseout can last “indefinitely” and euphoric commendation is premature and misplaced. Instead of applauding China for its phase-out announcement, one should rather consider the innocent victims who will lose their lives every day this abusive practice continues.

4. The recent announcements state that China will introduce a computerized organ-allocation system. Yet, the computerized organ-allocation system does not guarantee that the organs entered into the computer system are ethically procured. Instead, without openness to verification, the computerized organ allocation system poses the risk of enabling a more efficient allocation of unethically procured organs. It has to be ensured beyond any doubt that the new computerized organ allocation is not a sophisticated form of “organ laundering,” using prisoners’ organs and erasing all traces of their unethical procurement.

Resolving the unethical organ harvesting from prisoners in China does not require a computerized organ-allocation system. Instead, what is required is an immediate cessation of the unethical organ harvesting and a system that provides traceable documentation of subsequent procurements.

As long as China does not officially acknowledge organ harvesting from prisoners as unethical, it remains uncertain whether this organ source will ever be abolished even after establishing a computerized organ-allocation system and a voluntary organ-donation program.

The mixing of the two pools of organs, one from executions and another from organ donations, through the announced computerized organ-allocation system will only serve to whitewash the unethical practices. It gives them a coat of legitimacy and acceptance. It is simply a way to pretend the initial crime did not occur. The mere establishing of a computerized organ-allocation system without immediate cessation of the organ harvesting from prisoners is ethically meaningless.

5. In a May 20, 2013 ABC TV interview with Huang Jiefu, former vice minister of health in China, when asked about the harvesting of organs from prisoners, he replied, “Why do you object?” This suggests that Chinese officials still do not acknowledge that organ harvesting from executed prisoners is unethical. Ethical organ donation requires free, voluntary, and informed consent, yet China evades this requirement by trivializing it as “written” consent from prisoners.

The announcements from China speak of a phaseout of organ harvesting from executed prisoners, but it is not mentioned whether military hospitals, known to be heavily involved in the unethical organ-harvesting practices, will be included. The announced developments also do not address the from China never-acknowledged organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, in particular from detained Falun Gong practitioners as the largest target group.

In 2012, David Matas said at the annual conference of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in San Francisco:

“On Nov. 30, 1999, the ‘610 Office’ [in China] called more than 3,000 officials to the Great Hall of the People in the capital to discuss the campaign against Falun Gong, which was then not going well. Demonstrations were continuing to occur at Tiananmen Square. The head of the ‘610 Office,’ Li Lanqing, announced the government’s new policy on the movement: ‘Defame their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.’

A call to destroy Falun Gong physically is a call to genocide. It is not admittedly a call to genocide through sourcing their organs. Nonetheless, when that sourcing occurs, in the context of a call for physical destruction, the two should be linked. Organ sourcing is the means. Physical destruction is the intent.”

There is virtually no dividing line between destroying physically and harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners—the latter is even profitable. Thus, without publicly admitting the use of prisoners of conscience as an organ source, there is no guarantee that this path of organ sourcing will end. A gradual phaseout of this abusive practice with an indefinite end is ethically indefensible. It might be desirable from the side of the perpetrator but it is gruesome and unacceptable from the side of the victim. It is a tragedy for both the victims and the medical profession. The following quote by Rev. Martin L. King Jr. appears as timely as it was in the 1960s:

“ … the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off, or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism … Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

6. The announced phaseout of the organ harvesting from executed prisoners was accompanied by an official announcement of a public organ-donation system. Yet, there is a traditional reluctance in the Chinese populace to donate organs, which is also acknowledged by Chinese officials. Furthermore, there is no brain-death legislation in place, which would regulate the organ procurement from the brain-dead. Thus the public organ donation system would be based on cardiac-death donations, which would reduce the effectiveness of some of the donated organs.

In September 2013, the Chinese Guang Ming Daily published an article stating that from 100 potential organ donors in China, only 5 percent of the donors’ organs can eventually be used for transplantation. Overall, the conditions in China are likely to result in a continuation of the use of organs from prisoners beyond the pledged time frame of two years.

It has to be assured beyond any doubt that prisoners of conscience, primarily detained Falun Gong practitioners, are not forcibly enrolled into such public organ-donation program under a fake identity. It has been observed that fake identity documents with a Chinese nationality were issued to foreign transplant tourists in order to bypass the transplant-tourism-prohibition law. Transparency and monitoring is required to prevent an entering of fake identities into the computerized organ-allocation system.

7. In October 2011, The Lancet published the letter “Time for a boycott of Chinese science and medicine pertaining to organ transplantation.” The letter called for a “boycott on accepting papers at meetings, publishing papers in journals, and cooperating on research related to transplantation unless it can be verified that the organ source is not an executed prisoner.”

While we appreciate the strict call for ethical standards in publications from China, we are missing the same strict call when it comes to defending our own ethical standards. As much as the co-authors were courageous to publish the aforementioned letter in The Lancet due to ethical concerns, we should be even more motivated to call openly for an immediate end of the unethical organ harvesting itself.

Refusing to publish papers, which include data from executed prisoners, is a necessary but insufficient response to the abuses in China. We have an absolute imperative to also object vociferously to the harvesting itself. Living in a society that allows freedom of expression, we are not prohibited from openly calling for an immediate end of the unethical organ harvesting in China. In fact, as medical doctors and medical organizations, it is our ethical responsibility and obligation to call for an immediate end of this unethical practice.

In 2006, China Daily reported the number of transplants in China as high as 20,000, with 90 percent of the organs coming from executed prisoners. Attention and pressure by the international community in the past few years have contributed to the recent developments and indicate that we need to continue our efforts to call for an immediate end of the organ-harvesting abuse.

Once the practice is recognized as unethical, there is no excuse to continue it. The unethical organ harvesting from prisoners could be resolved at once if the international community combines its efforts and opposes the practice with one voice. There is no law that prohibits us from calling upon China to refrain from unethical organ harvesting immediately—it only requires the willingness to do so.

Otherwise, we might need to ask ourselves if China were successful in using a computerized organ-allocation system and the announcement of a phaseout like a Trojan horse to undermine and dilute our ethical standards.

We call upon the international community to join us in calling upon China to immediately and unconditionally end the unethical harvesting of organs from executed prisoners and all prisoners of conscience.

(Minghui.org) “There is a Holocaust in China,” stated Israeli journalist and broadcaster Billy Beserglick in her speech in front of the Chinese Embassy in Tel Aviv on July 22, 2013.

“I’m the second generation after World War II Holocaust. My parents were in Auschwitz and miraculously survived. [Otherwise,] I might very well not be here now,” she said.

Israeli journalist and broadcaster Billy Beserglick speaks at the rally marking 14 years of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Ms. Beserglick imagined a woman her age being held in a basement of a forced labor camp after torture, “It’s shocking that in 2013 a Holocaust occurs, and the world goes ‘business as usual.’”

“Those are terrible things,” she said of the crimes committed by the Chinese communist regime. “Organs are harvested from people in concentration camps!”

“We should not turn a blind eye!” she concluded.

On this summer day, two hundred people didn’t. They came to protest the regime’s crimes against humanity and its 14-year-long brutal persecution of millions of law-abiding citizens in China–practitioners of the ancient spiritual cultivation practice called Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong), who believe in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance.

Over these years, the Chinese regime has directed officials and agencies at all levels of government, and state-owned enterprises, to carry out the persecution, spending billions of dollars and sparing no expense.

The peak of the horror is the use of Falun Gong practitioners as a source of organs for transplantation. In military hospitals and under heavy military supervision, organs have been harvested from people while they are still alive, so that the regime and its cadres can get a higher price. Tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been killed this way, and thousands more were killed through other types of horrific torture in forced labor camps and prisons across China.

Candles lit in memory of Falun Gong practitioners killed in the persecution in China.

A peaceful rally marks 14 years of the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

This child’s aunt was tortured for two years in a forced labor camp in Beijing.

Supporters join the rally.

People sign a petition calling for an end to the persecution in China.

“It was jealousy that stirred up the persecution,” explained Roy Bar-Ilan, a spokesperson for the Israeli Falun Dafa Association, “because it is an amazing cultivation practice. It became very popular very quickly in China, and then all of a sudden, tens of millions of good people became the largest group of prisoners of conscience in the world. The severity of the persecution – rape, shocks by electric batons, 45,000 to 60,000 organ harvesting cases, according to modest estimates – millions of people, of families, have suffered intensely and on an unparalleled scale.

“At first, everyone repeated the propaganda, and thus, in fact, promoted the persecution. Yesterday I found an article published in a major Israeli media in July 2001. It was written there that 14 practitioners had committed suicide in prison, and the prison authorities had ‘saved’ 11 others. It was also written that the Chinese government had decided to place Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps and monitor them around the clock as if they were worried about their safety. This story made me cry. In actuality, it should have been a report on the murder of the 14 practitioners, [who were just] like me, my wife and my children.”

Bar-Ilan continued, “We were able to overturn the lies that the Chinese regime created as part of its repression. Now people in the world do not believe the lies of the Chinese Communist Party. Yet many still can’t truly understand what Falun Gong is all about.

“To be a Falun Gong practitioner is to continuously try to improve oneself, to not blame others when encountering conflicts, but instead look inward, to not hit back when being attacked or sworn at, and to take loss and gain lightly.

“To be a Falun Gong practitioner is to get rid of selfishness and deviated thoughts. It is to strive to be considerate of others, to be an uncompromising moral example that does not bend in the face of profit or threat of any kind.

“In the face of the propaganda machine of the Chinese government, their media, embassies, and business and industrial relations all over the world, we are armed only with our hearts full of compassion and our determination to not let the evil, though influence, win the battle of humanity’s morality and future.

“We go out [to raise awareness about the persecution] day after day not for any gain, but because we believe that mankind still has hope, that the hearts of human beings still harbor morality and kindness… And the fact that you are here today proves that we are right, proves that there is hope.”

Epoch Times Director: “Silence Is What Allows These Crimes to Carry On”

“One cannot be neutral,” said Gilad Slonim, director of the Israeli edition of theEpoch Times at the rally. “We [Jews] have been through a genocide, where a dictator decided to destroy us because what we believed in did not suit him, and now we are directly or indirectly helping the same kind of a regime to carry out this persecution.

“Thus, one can’t be neutral in this battle. Everybody would like to be neutral, [thinking] ‘Why get involved? Why put this pain into my head? It’s happening so far away – it has nothing to do with us…’ This is not true! It is related to each and every one of us. Everyone today has to take a side.

“Not taking a proactive step against this persecution is equal to siding with it, since then you agree to be silent. Silence is what allows these crimes to carry on.”

“July 20th–a Great Shame in Mankind’s History”

Two Chinese Falun Gong practitioners living in Israel spoke in front of the Chinese Embassy, addressing not only the crowd, but also people at the embassy.

“In my opinion, the day of July 20th will remain as a great shame in history of mankind,” one of them said. “Why do I say so? Because 14 years ago on July 20th in China – such a big country with 1.3 billion people – the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] launched a brutal persecution of Falun Dafa.”

“Falun Dafa practitioners are people of good reputation in China,” she said. “There are many people who have a sense of justice and ask the 610 Office wicked policemen, ‘You do not catch the bad guys but specifically target good people. What kind of people are you?'”

“Some people have done a test with a mobile phone, sending out a text message. Messages with the words ‘truthfulness, compassion, forbearance’ [the main principles of Falun Gong] were blocked [by the regime]. But messages with the words ‘false, evil, fighting” were received. This shows to what extent the CCP has put China under its brutal control, so that the basic morality has been completely wiped out.

“However, the remaining goodness of Chinese people has begun to emerge as they learn the truth about the Communist regime. Now more than 140 million Chinese people have quit the CCP and its related organizations.”

Voices of Support for Falun Gong

Dr. Amir Shani from the New Liberal Movement called for the end to the persecution. In a taped interview he said, “We are here to express empathy and solidarity with innocent Falun Gong practitioners persecuted for no reason by the communist regime in China.” Many members of the New Liberal Movement group from various sides of the political map and social spectrum came to support the rally.

Rabbi Chaim Cohen from the Rabbis for Human Rights organization has attend numerous rallies calling for the end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China. In a powerful voice he declared, “We must stop the terrible persecution against Falun Gong!” He added that trading between Beijing and Jerusalem must take into account human rights.

Herzl Hakak, chairman of the Hebrew Writers Association, and Balfour Hakak, the organization’s former chairman, sent a statement to be read at the rally, “The phenomenon of psychiatric torture and organ harvesting is utterly shocking, both for their severity and scope, and for the betrayal of the ‘doctor’s oath,’ which every doctor takes to protect the sanctity of human life. Here in front of us, are physicians within the establishment [in China] … using their medical knowledge to violate human rights and endanger human life.”

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner also sent a letter of support, “Be strong and brave for the sake of justice and righteousness, for the protection of every person on Earth who is unjustly persecuted. This is our duty to protest and raise our voices. And when all voices are joined, it will eventually lead to salvation.”

“A Bleeding Lotus Flower”

The rally was accompanied by the sounds of an Erhu (an ancient Chinese stringed instrument) solo piece, “A Bleeding Lotus Flower.” The music was composed as a protest against the Chinese regime’s crimes of organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.

The solo tells of a true story revealed in 2009 by a security guard who had witnessed in 2002 how two military surgeons harvested the heart and kidneys of a Falun Gong practitioner while she was still alive.

This practitioner had been illegally arrested because of her belief in Falun Gong. She was a teacher, and the devoted mother of a 12-year-old son. While she was held in custody, she was brutally and repeatedly raped by the police. They also tortured her and shocked her with electric batons for seven days.

She was then taken to the fifth floor of the General Military Hospital of Shen-Yang City. The surgeon cut open her chest without any anesthesia, while she was fully conscious and wide awake. When the surgeon cut her heart arteries, she died.

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